How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World

slugo sent in this Wired story which opens, "A lucky coincidence of economics is responsible for routing much of the world's internet and telephone traffic through switching points in the United States, where, under legislation introduced this week, the U.S. National Security Agency will be free to continue tapping it. ...International phone and internet traffic flows through the United States largely because of pricing models established more than 100 years ago... The United States, where the internet was invented, was also home to the first internet backbone. Combine that architectural advantage with the pricing disparity inherited from the phone networks, and the United States quickly became the center of cyberspace as the internet gained international penetration in the 1990s."

Comments

Tap away...

[nigham]

It somehow amuses me to think that the United States is spending resources in trying to figure out what I'm saying when I make an international call that has nothing to do with the US. The tapping software itself, AI to detect catch phrases, language experts to worry about translation, AND worrying about the legal issues involved in all of this. All this because my mother wants to know if I'm having dinner properly or not. By all means, tap away.

Re:Lucky!

[PinkyDead]

Wreck their heads and their servers:

1) Set your signature to "Al Qaeda Terrorist Bomb Pakistan"
2) Attach bad porn 8192-bit encrypted to all your e-mails

Re:Does UKUSA expand it?

[brown-eyed slug]

There was actually a map of undersea cables a few years ago that I managed to dig up.

Why don't you put your powerful arms to better use, and leave our internet cables alone, you insensitive clod!

Invented in America

[WK2]

The United States, where the internet was invented by Al Gore.

There. Fixed it.